It’s almost that time of year again. Today Anna and I met with County Agent Keith Fontenot and Evangeline Parish farmer Kenneth LaHaye to discuss plans for the 2011 rice water weevil demonstration test. Kent Guillory is the consultant who will assist with monitoring this test location.

This will be the third year that we have worked with Kenneth (and his dog Harley) on a demo test site. We appreciate his continuing support of our on-farm demonstration program. The last two years we worked with Kenneth near Chicot Lake. This year, our test site is located near Vidrine on La-10. We will provide directions to the field after planting.

Kenneth's dog Harley - she makes for great company in farm work.

In the 2011 rww demonstration test we will restrict our insecticides to the three different seed treatments that are now available on the market. These will be compared to an untreated check. The table below compares these products:

Kenneth will be planting RiceTec variety XL745 at a 25 pound per acre seeding rate. The seed treatments will be arranged in two blocks, with one rep in each block. Each rep will include two 20 ft drill passes. We intend to plant sometime between March 12 and 15, if the weather cooperates. Kenneth has already prepared the land for planting. A herbicide burndown of 32 oz/acre generic roundup and 2 oz/acre Valor was applied in November, 2010. When looking at the field we noticed some areas where his burndown did not provide control.

The weedy strips in the field are the result of tapping the boom and turning off an outside nozzle.

Kenneth asked us to post this picture to illustrate how effective a burndown put out in November can be. The missed passes in the field are the perfect example of what he could have been fighting as he prepared to plant, had he decided to wait until spring to apply his burndown. Last season Kenneth grew soybeans in this field. Rice will be drilled into the stale seedbed at around 25 pounds per acre. This soybean-rice rotation can sometimes be conducive to injury from the colaspis beetle. We’ll be sure to monitor for injury from this pest when we take stand counts two weeks after emergence.